Lisa Miscione - Angel Fire

The orderly, who had accompanied the chief to the basement, grudgingly lifted the book to see a sketch of a church. A thunderbolt clapped from the sky and the church was in flames. Inside, a man, woman, and child huddled together happily. On either side of them two figures hung from crosses: a disemboweled woman and a man with his eyes gouged out.

The bark of the trees felt familiar beneath Juno’s sensitive fingertips. The sound of the wind was a song he had heard before. And he felt the clearing on the skin of his face and smelled the flowers from the garden, just as he had as a child. Juno had found his way home. It had taken a while, but it was if the church was homing in on him, pulling him into its arms.

But as soon as he climbed the few low steps, pushed open the heavy wooden doors, and stepped inside, he felt that the energy, which he knew like the feel of his own skin, had been altered. He felt the soft chuckle raise the hair on the back of his neck before he heard it.

Juno did not respond, only lifted a hand to steady himself against the last row of pews. Maybe he had come for this. After all, Lydia had warned him that he might be a target of this maniac. Maybe this was Juno’s cowardly way of committing suicide, unable as he felt to face the world that had been revealed to him.

“It’s all so perfect,’’ said Bernard Hugo. “We are all truly part of a divine plan. Don’t you think so, Juno? I didn’t even have to come for you, you came to me.’’

Pain and rage radiated off Bernard Hugo in pulsating waves that moved through Juno like electricity. But his voice was measured, like a metronome, and as cold as liquid nitrogen. Juno sensed it was best to stay silent, feeling that the sound of his voice would be like a match to a fuse.

“When a predator stalks its prey, creeps though the woods or the grass, in that second before the chase begins, the prey always has a final moment of realization – an awareness that has crept into its eyes, its sensitive nose lifted suddenly to the wind, an inner silence of delicate ears straining for sound, of lean, taut muscles tensing for flight. Humans assume that a scent caught, in the last minute, on the wind, warns the prey. But I think it’s something else. A disturbance in psychic energy, a spiritual knowledge that one has entered the last moments of life on this earth, a mental connection with the creature who will have the final impact on one’s existence. Do you think that’s true?’’

Juno sat, knowing it would be futile and ridiculous for a blind man to run. He wasn’t afraid to die, if it came to that. “Who are you and what do you want from me?’’

“Who am I? Don’t you even know me? You, the murderer of my son, don’t even know my name?’’

“I have never hurt anyone in my life.’’

“You claim to be a holy man and a healer. And you are nothing but a liar. You are false to God, like all of them. But you are the worst of all.’’ His voice was rising and he was moving closer to Juno. “At least the others were false only to themselves. But you fooled everyone. In the end, when my son lay dying, your prayers meant nothing. You were no closer to God than anyone else.’’

“Have you killed all these people because I am not a healer, because I was not able to heal your son? I tried

– God knows, I would have done anything to be what people thought I was.’’

“And all this time,’’ Bernard continued, unhearing, “I have been under your nose, stealing the dirty sheep from your diseased flock and offering their purified hearts back to God. I am His warrior, His angel of death. All was taken from me so that I could do the Lord’s work. And you never even knew me. Your uncle knew me as Vince. Vince A. Gemiennes – the name God gave me.’’

“So you think that by killing those innocent people, you have given your son’s death meaning?’’

“They had no right,’’ he yelled, almost shrieking. “They had no right to live when my son, as pure and good as an angel of God, died. There must have been a reason God wanted him to come home, there must have been a reason that I suffered so much pain.’’

“God forgive you, Bernard, for what you have done, for your misguided acts.’’

“‘And I will strike down upon thee with furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy. And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee.’’’

Juno heard the scratch and flare of a match being lit.

“I only wish you could see what I have planned for you.’’

And the heavy sigh of flame to gasoline was the last thing he heard before he felt the radiating pain of a blunt strike to the base of his neck, and then there was nothing.

Lydia parked her car a few hundred yards from the Church of the Holy Name and sprinted the rest of the way, to keep the element of surprise on her side. She didn’t know how she was certain that Bernard Hugo and Juno were in the church together, but there was not a doubt in her mind. Then as she got closer, she caught the scent of fire.

She ran up the front steps and pushed with all her strength on the wrought-iron handles of the heavy wooden doors. She ducked down beneath the black clouds of smoke billowing out of the open doors. She pulled up her sweatshirt, covering her mouth and her nose. Shouting for Juno, she saw him lying on the altar, surrounded by flames. Above him loomed Bernard Hugo.

“What are you doing, Hugo?’’ she yelled, as she removed the Glock from the pouch at her waist.

When he heard her, he spun around.

As she moved in closer, she could see that Juno was spread out on a cross laid across the altar and that Hugo was preparing to nail his wrists and crossed ankles to the wood with a gigantic hammer.

“Stay where you are, Lydia. You were only to bear witness to the end. You came too early,’’ he said, looking at her with disapproval.

“I can’t let you do this. Stop right now or I’m going to fire.’’

He ignored her and lifted the hammer above his head, preparing to strike an iron nail through Juno’s left hand, the flames rising around him. She fired a round from her gun and Bernard Hugo fell to the ground in a lump.

She ran up the aisle to Juno and shook him, trying to rouse him.

“Juno, please,’’ she begged. But he was deeply unconscious. She dropped the gun, put her hands under his arms, and had begun to drag him to the door, her throat already constricting from the smoke, when she felt someone grab her by her hair. Bernard Hugo pulled her head back violently until it rested on his shoulder. She could just see his eyes and was overcome by his vile breath. She saw the gleam of his scalpel, and thought of the gun she had carelessly dropped to the floor.

“I’ve been waiting for you, bitch,’’ he hissed.

“I’ve been waiting for you, too,’’ she answered. She dropped Juno and thrust her elbow back into Hugo’s abdomen with all her strength. As he doubled forward, he brought the scalpel into her thigh and pulled up. She felt the searing pain and screamed but it was somewhere outside of her as she reached, unthinking, and wrested the instrument from her leg. He had missed the artery that he doubtless had been aiming for, but still, blood sprayed from her wound. She edged away from him, struggling to her feet, the scalpel in her hand.

“Come on, you fuck, I’ll send you to see Robbie,’’ she said as he moved toward her. In one swift motion, he had her wrist in a hard grip she couldn’t escape, and he squeezed until her hand involuntarily opened and the scalpel dropped to the floor. With her free hand she grabbed his shirt and pulled him in and hit the bridge of his nose with the top of her head. He staggered back, stunned, blood pouring from his nostrils. She scampered for the scalpel and brought it around just as he was on top of her again. She jabbed it forcefully into his eye, though she’d been aiming for his jugular. He roared with pain and fell back twitching. She didn’t think it was in deep enough to have touched his frontal lobe. She only hoped the pain was enough to keep him unconscious. She grabbed the Glock from the altar where she’d dropped it and waited. He did not move. The flames were all around her now, licking up to the ceiling.